Saturday, April 02, 2011

Goldberg: feminism is a cure for the world

There is a lot for traditionalists to cheer on in the men's movement, but also ideas that we can't support.

Take, for instance, two recent posts at The Spearhead. One was a worthwhile criticism of Jonah Goldberg, the editor of National Review Online. NRO is supposed to be a conservative publication, but Goldberg has written a post that is remarkably uncritical of feminism.

Goldberg begins with a quote by Kay Hymowitz:

For the first time ever, and I do mean ever, young women are reaching their twenties with more achievements, more education, more property, and, arguably, more ambition than their male counterparts.

Goldberg treats these social trends as unproblematic. He writes,

These are the fruits of feminist success. And, as the father of a little girl, I’m grateful for many of feminism’s achievements.

He then goes on to argue that feminism has completed its mission in America and should now focus its efforts overseas:

The good news for those who want to continue the fight for women is that there is plenty of work left to do — abroad.

The plight of women in other countries is not only dire, it’s central to global poverty and the war on terrorism.

As The Spearhead post puts it, Goldberg is a kind of feminist imperialist, wanting to spread it from his own country to other lands.

Goldberg is extraordinarily complacent about feminism. It is naive to believe that feminists will suddenly declare their mission to be over in America. If a larger aim of feminism is to make our sex not matter, then feminism will always be at war with how society operates.

Goldberg is also blind to the negative consequences of the social trends described by Kay Hymowitz. Hymowitz herself believes that the male role in society has been undermined, with many young men now trapped in a pre-adulthood:

My book grew out of my observation that relations between the sexes during this protracted period I call pre-adulthood are, at best, very confused. I have tried to figure out why so many young women today complain about men being thoughtless, immature and boorish. I also wanted to know why large numbers of men have become so profoundly hostile to women.

...As a number of commenters have correctly noted, feminism celebrated women’s independence sometimes to the point of making men seem an expendable part of family life. Throughout the 1990’s when many of today’s pre-adult men were growing up, the entire culture turned into a you-go-girl cheering section...Boys might have also observed their uncles or fathers, perhaps good men, being taken to the cleaners by wives...

All of this seems to have passed Goldberg by. He complacently accepts the underlying assumptions of feminism and doesn't understand that once you endorse feminist principles you will want to see them implemented in society in ever more radical ways, even if this means coercive state intervention. Therefore, what is the point of being a Goldberg? What do you achieve? You cheer on left-wing changes to society whilst impotently arguing that things have gone far enough. History will inevitably record your failure to halt the onward march of a principle that you yourself endorsed.

The second post at The Spearhead begins well enough with an encouragement to men to act in a more masculine way to attract women. But it then urges on men a radical policy of self-determination. The author believes there are three important ways that men could become more self-determining.

First, by getting a vasectomy:

men are entitled to exercise discretion over their own bodies in the extreme. Advances in vasectomies have given men the option of having a vasectomy in their single years with the possibility of reversal later on. In this day and age of uncertain paternity and women who derive significant income from child support, my advice would be for men to undergo a vasectomy as a form of birth control.

The decision to do so is ultimately private and need not be shared with prospective sexual partners, girlfriends, or even wives. A woman is not required to notify her husband of an abortion, and her husband is not bound to notify her that he had a vasectomy before they got married. Additionally, having a vasectomy gives a man a degree of reproductive self-determination that a woman cannot influence...

Should a man choose a polygynous existence, he can do so knowing that he is free from the concern of impregnating any girlfriend or mistress he might have. He is free to enjoy sex on his own terms, to be affirmed by it as he sees fit without facing exploitation from a former lover.

Second, by replacing Western marriage with a more temporary Islamic version:

There are innovations from other cultures that we might import here as we restore our political power and voice. We might take the example of Iranian Muslims who enter into a contract called the sigheh, where a type of temporary marriage is entered into. The conditions are spelled out at the beginning, from the amount of support that will be provided to the amount of sex that will be given. The contract can be anywhere from a few hours to months or years in duration, and it is renewable.

This seems like a far more reasonable arrangement for men to pursue than the antiquated institution of full-blown marriage...Sigheh represents the best of what marriage has to offer without any of the finality or restrictions.

Third, by dating older women:

Simply put, a male in his twenties is better suited to pursue a relationship with an older woman. A woman hits her sexual peak in her thirties, and a man at that age ought to realistically assess what he wants from a relationship and pursue it without shame. Moreover, older women have their own means and their own status, and the introduction of a younger man into the networks they’ve already established can be important to later success in employment and business. Your peers in the same age group cannot offer you either the status, the connections, or even the same sexual competency as an older woman because they don’t have any of those things.

The economics of the matter do not lie. The older someone is, the more likely they are to have a better economic footing.

This is all justified in terms of male autonomy:

But most importantly, realize that the brotherhood you have with your own kind will be key to resurgence in male self-determination...

It’s time to ... take concrete steps to achieve sexual self-determination and pride for men on their own terms. It’s time to empower men to define their own lives however they see fit, to remove the institutional and social obstacles to men who seek to live life as an alpha male by their own merits.

I understand this response. Men grow up observing the attempt by society and the state to maximise the autonomy of women. So some men will inevitably argue that the same should be done for men. They will try to envisage what maximum autonomy would mean for men.

And the answer given above is that men should not have children; that they should marry on a temporary, contractual basis only; that they should marry for money and status; and that they should focus on removing obstacles to satisfying sexual desires.

But, as with any attempt to make autonomy the overriding value, this denies important aspects of our nature. The advice that single men should get vasectomies is particularly poor, given the importance to so many men of becoming fathers. The advice to marry older women for money and connections is also poor as it denies to men the kind of passionate relationship that is more likely to be found as a young man with a young woman.

It's a vision of society in which what matters is career and status and casual sexual relationships, with little concern for family or nation. It would inevitably be as corrosive to society as feminism has been, if not more so.

"Concerning the second post, according to your logic men should buy a thug tea and crumpets and hope for the best, may work for Jesus but not everyone is willing to be a maryr"

No Anonymous. He isn't saying to walk blindly and accept the way things are. I think what he is saying is that we need to reject liberalism as a philosophy and try to work to create a traditional conservative lifestyle and communities as well. Sometimes I think that may involve private religious schools of our heritage or homeschooling communities for education or even avoiding the secular liberal state definition of marriage (endorsing the religious definition of it and getting married in a church only).

I think what you want Anonymous is replicated in this post at OneSTDV --- onestdv.blogspot.com/2011/03/anti-establishment-mere-reaction-vs.html

Concerning NRO and the Spearheard this is truly alarming. It would be best if right-liberal influence was turned to a minimum.

"For the first time ever, and I do mean ever, young women are reaching their twenties with more achievements, more education, more property, and, arguably, more ambition than their male counterparts."

Economic autonomy and advancement of women has decreased men's advancement and power and also has influenced areas such as medicine and science tremendously --- www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2011/03/mens-earnings-declined-as-womens-moved-upward/

The "Free trade is a luxury that we can no longer afford" post has interesting points --- www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2011/03/free-trade-the-luxury-we-can-no-longer-afford/

Alte mentioned how a housewife is cheaper and how female soldiers isn't right. She has a few good posts about this --- traditionalcatholicism.wordpress.com/

Many of these neoconservatives, right-liberal and libertarians figures don't see the damage they do to conservatism. An exception was one I believe though who openly stated that his intention was to change, twist, subvert or destroy the traditional conservative philosophy while molding society to his progressive liberal views. He was a sort of nihilist writer or professor from the UK I believe.

The trouble is that it is much more likely that a movement focused on more autonomous rights for men will succeed in the current environment than it is that a movement focused on turning back the clock to traditionalist lifestyles will, on a scale larger than one's individual choices. That's why the stuff about autonomy is grasped at -- it's a much lower hanging fruit.

As for fighting fire with fire, well, sometimes you need to burn the place down in order to start over properly.

Will you be happy when she is 42 and childless? That, too, is a (bitter) fruit of feminist "success".

Same thought crossed my mind. If she follows the feminist pattern here in Australia she'll reject decent men in her 20s, find that her options slowly decline in her 30s and then in a great panic settle for anyone in her mid-30s, ditch her career and try to have a baby before her time runs out.

Maybe Goldberg doesn't care that much about the decline of family culture; he might be happy to have America populated from abroad. But he should not then claim the mantle of being a conservative defender. He's nothing of the sort.

Höllenhund, I would have no hesitation in dismantling the measures that have been enacted in past decades to artificially prop up female autonomy. I would make sure that fathers were put in a strong position to carry out their duties. I would return economic resources from the state to fathers; I would give fathers more legal protection within marriage so that (absent obvious abuse) they were able to hold their ground within a marriage; I would abolish unfair economic disadvantages applied to men (affirmative action programmes etc); I would not provide state finance for films which ridiculed or belittled fathers or fatherhood; and I would not use the state to incentivise single motherhood.

Höllenhund, I am not aware of any society that has advanced to a high degree of civilisation that has not deliberately elevated the role and position of fatherhood.

That's why the stuff about autonomy is grasped at -- it's a much lower hanging fruit.

Novaseeker, I agree with you that it is, as you put it, a lower hanging fruit and for that reason it will inevitably be a response of some men.

But look at where it leads. Just as feminist autonomy led women to self-destructive behaviours, such as leaving family formation too late, male autonomy leads to such things as calls for vasectomies and hanging out with older women for their money.

Is that really what is going to fulfil men? I think it's a second rate life. What men really want is a sexual/romantic relationship with an attractive young woman who loves them and who is therefore, willingly, their lover. Men also want to experience fatherhood; to be able to raise sons and to have cute daughters to "princess" and to love. Men want to be loved and respected as husbands and fathers. They want their work to have the added meaning and dignity of keeping their families afloat. They want their efforts to work and to raise a family to perpetuate a tradition they identify with.

Liberalism is at war with this fully realised life for men. Therefore it has become more difficult to attain. But there are still men who live something like such a life (in my suburb, as I've said before, it still stubbornly endures).

And nor do men have to wait for the total defeat of liberalism to restore something of what has been lost. It would be possible for smaller groups of men to start to organise more locally: to establish a church congregation or some sort of traditionalist association or a school or even to congregate in a particular community.

When John Locke wrote about his social contract, did he not take for granted an even more fundamental social contract, i.e. the acceptance of traditional sex roles by the respective sexes? If one sex unilaterally withdraws from this contract, does it not follow that the other sex is de facto relieved of its contractual obligations?

Is the real problem with men an issue of unwarranted accommodation i.e. that men have tolerated feminism BUT are still labouring under the anti-feminist notion that we, in general, are somehow obliged to provide for and protect women when we really are not because women, in general, have ditched their end of the bargain?

I doubt if it would have occurred to Locke that we would end up in this situation.

I agree with you about the current imbalance. But as others have pointed out there are two solutions.

The first is for men to envisage an autonomy of their own to match that promoted by feminists for women.

The second is to hold women to more traditional expectations in order to make male commitments to family and society more reasonable.

The problem with the first option is that it assumes that what fulfils life is autonomy alone. It is also the mutually assured destruction option. It means the final collapse and destruction of the Western peoples.

The problem with the second option is that it requires a challenge to deeply entrenched belief systems. That can seem daunting.

But I would still give the second option a go. If it fails over a few generations then no doubt the first scenario will play itself out.

"For the first time ever, and I do mean ever, young women are reaching their twenties with more achievements, more education, more property, and, arguably, more ambition than their male counterparts."

This is an illusion. In reality, feminists are not achieving anything of importance.

"Third, by dating older women:"

And this is funny. He talks about self-determination and manning up, but then suggests you should find a sugar mommy to help you with employment. His post also further demonstrates that the men's rights movement is just feminism with the genders reversed. The two are otherwise functionally identical. What a joke.

"The second is to hold women to more traditional expectations in order to make male commitments to family and society more reasonable.

The problem with the second option is that it requires a challenge to deeply entrenched belief systems. That can seem daunting."

The second one is harder but it's the correct and moral choice. It's much better that utilitarianism and autonomy as one of the goals for life. I read somewhere that traditional conservatives tend to be consequentalists and therefore value the end product and therefore the method used so they wouldn't use certain methods (an example being MRA's philosophy) to achieve a right goal. They tend to stick to their beliefs.

"Goldberg is simple....Feminist Imperialism gives Israel another reason to attack the Middle East."

I'm against Islam and against the neoconservatives (drunk freedom fighters who are forcing or desire to establish Western liberal democracy in the Middle East) and I think you have a point. Not to sound like an anti-semite (I tend to support Israel more in the Middle Eastern conflicts) but there is a larger number of Jews who are liberals and many of them tend to have high IQs so they tend to be sucessful --- amnation.com/vfr/archives/019014.html

"This is an illusion. In reality, feminists are not achieving anything of importance."

Feminists and liberals in general are like teenage children taking advantage of their parents protection and parasites sucking the host dry. They take advantage of the system created but never create the system nor sustain it. The patriarchy has created civilization. Every society goes in cycles with a rise, stability, decline, fall and renewal. Patriarchy is present in the rise, renewal and early stages of stability as the main ideology while egalitarianism and 'progress' (non-Patriarchy) is present in the later stages of stability, decline and the fall.

""As for fighting fire with fire, well, sometimes you need to burn the place down in order to start over properly.""

Höllenhund said...

""Funny how everyone ignores the concluding sentence in Novaseeker's comment.""

Sometimes you do need to burn something down to start over properly.

But the thing is burning anyway and we want to at least have some concept of how to rebuild so the sorry farce does not simply repeat itself.

So feminism has destroyed half our culture and degraded the rest, does that mean that the same things that have worked so well in making women as miserable as they are today should be tried for men on the basis that things couldn't get much worse?

I have more sympathy for view expressed by the game blogger Roissy, basically that if you get 10% of the male population to "turn" player the social system will slowly change.

That is pie in the sky, but sounds like the very centre of sensibility when put up against some of the stuff from Spearhead these days.

Increasing male autonomy is more achievable than eliminating institutionalized feminism because the overriding current paradigm (liberalism) promotes autonomy.The question is whether both tactics will have the same ultimate result. I suspect they will.

From a principled point of view, I agree that eliminating feminism is the correct strategy. However, the alternative is to recognize a reductio ad absurdum and play it out, which is what some MRAs are doing.

I think that the anti-feminist tactic would necessitate admitting male weakness and appealing to the better angels of women (maneuvering from a position of weakness) while the MRA tactic operates from a position of strength vis a vis liberalism: women already have X rights which decrease male autonomy, therefore men should have Y rights which redress the imbalance.

Homeschooling, segregated communities and private institutions are the right way to got instead of just avoiding marriage completely. We should concentrate our efforts on creating something apart from liberalism instead of just rejecting everything.

"women already have X rights which decrease male autonomy, therefore men should have Y rights which redress the imbalance."

I agree with this statement but in practise it can lead to,

"such things as calls for vasectomies and hanging out with older women for their money."

Which is really nothing more than a call for self indulgence.

You have to address the argument made by Mark that the "mutually assured destruction" situation won't just destroy a feminist construct but all of western civilisation.

James said very accurately that,

"the thing is burning anyway and we want to at least have some concept of how to rebuild so the sorry farce does not simply repeat itself."

We are seeing the weaknesses in the feminist model right now and this has not been entirely brought up by male dissatisfaction, reflected in movements such as the MRA's, but by female dissatisfaction and also a general increase in social difficulties. Consequently as said, the thing is "burning" to a degree already and so we have to decide what to do next.

Its possible to want to defend western society without wanting to defend a purely feminist construct nor doing everything that a feminist says.

"Homeschooling, segregated communities and private institutions are the right way to go instead of just avoiding marriage completely."

Whilst not disagreeing with the sentiment I have some concern about being too isolated. For instance if we surrender too large an aspect of our society, such as the public schooling, we're in danger of never getting them back. In my opinion we have to be competitive on the national as well as the local or domestic level.

I don't think it is wise to be so eager to burn everything down. I am reminded of St. Thomas More's dialogue with his brother-in-law. When you burn down the forest to get at Satan, where will you hide when you come face to face with Satan himself?

This cavalier recklessness that pervades the mindset of the men's movement is but one more reason to expect nothing but a prolonging of the pain and tragedy that is feminism, even after feminism dies the fiery death it deserves.

Jonah Goldberg is married to a woman 6 years older than he, if memory serves. His wife Jessica retained her name upon their marriage. She is a feminist, probably of the "equity" school. She wrote a book on Title IX (US law from the late 1960's early 1970's that prohibited sexual discrimination in higher education) a few years back. The gist of the book wasn't that Title IX was a bad idea, but that the Clinton administration had deformed it.

(Title IX as currently interpreted is steadily killing men's intercollegiate sports, aside from football. Wrestling is nearly dead, for example).

Plus Jonah Goldberg and his wife have one child, a girl. Perhaps if they'd had a boy, by now he might see a few cracks in the feminist pedestal. So he's basically clueless about most of the things discussed here and there in the world about feminism, and since he lives with a feminist (who played high school basketball in Alaska at the same time as Sarah Palin did), he's not too likely to go looking into the matter. No sense borrowing trouble.

Spearhead's response was rather measured, I thought.

The other posting is pretty standard for some men. It is interesting that you object to the idea of a man freezing his sperm and having a vasectomy. Do you find any falsehood in the claim that a woman can have an abortion without her husband's consent? That is a fact in every state in the US. In fact, she can keep it a secret from him. So why do you object to a man having a vasectomy, prior to marriage?

I understand that you regard too much autonomy as the basis for the decline of the West. However, at a time when women can abort at will, become pregnant at will via sperm banks, lie freely about their own birth control status, and even scrounge semen out of used condoms to impregnate themselves with, I really don't understand the objection. If a man is going to have sex with women outside of marriage, he'd better protect himself, lest he wind up being ordered to pay child support for some other man's child.

Now, you can argue that sex should only occur within marriage. I can understand that argument; at which point, the many dangers of marriage 2.0 and divorce 2.0 are on the table.

This cavalier recklessness that pervades the mindset of the men's movement is but one more reason to expect nothing but a prolonging of the pain and tragedy that is feminism, even after feminism dies the fiery death it deserves.

One more time. There is no "men's rights movement". There is a collection of various men and a few women, working in various directions, to right what they perceive as wrongs. The father's organization in the UK is working on different things than some father's rights in the US.

The men and women who are making false rape a public issue are working on different things than others are.

It is a grossly sweeping generalization to write of "cavalier recklessness within the men's rights movement". One might as well write of "overarching smug self-satisfaction of the traditionalist-conservatives"...that would be an equally gross sweeping generalization.

But do carry on. I understand that despising men who are righteously angry about serious injustice is important to you trad-cons.

If a woman is likely to go through the trash to impregnate herself with a used condom shes surely likely to give off signs of an unusual degree of entitlement, (even if such an attitude is increasingly common). In such a case you're better off not sleeping with her. Generally speaking I've been able to tell if women are likely to do something outrageous. However, this comes with experience and you can certainly get burned at the beginning.

It certainly says something that a woman could do that kind of thing and the man would still be liable for child support. Is that really the case?

"In my opinion we have to be competitive on the national as well as the local or domestic level."

Yes Jesse but we have to start somewhere. We start at the local level and move to the national level or do you desire that we go both at once?

"The other posting is pretty standard for some men. It is interesting that you object to the idea of a man freezing his sperm and having a vasectomy. Do you find any falsehood in the claim that a woman can have an abortion without her husband's consent?"

This is the problem with MRA's. They see everything through autonomy and liberal lenses. Abortion is wrong except in cases such as when the mother's life is in danger or when she was raped. Next thing you will say is that women have always worked in careers throughout centuries like they have in the past 40 years. Or better yet women have always been promiscous. This isn't about "consent". This isn't about liberal ideals such as democracy and freedom.

"I really don't understand the objection. If a man is going to have sex with women outside of marriage, he'd better protect himself, lest he wind up being ordered to pay child support for some other man's child."

Don't become a mirror of the feminist movement Anonymous Reader. If you fight fire with fire at this instance you will burn the whole thing down. MRA's and gamers in general only seem to what to take advantage of the decline instead of opposing it. The advice to men should be to avoid and reject bad women and not having sex outside of marriage. Avoid the secular liberal state definition of marriage (get married in a conservative religious institution). I've heard birth control pills have contaminated much of the environment and has extended female hormones turning male fish into male/female hybrids but you sure won't hear that from liberal global warming alarmists.

"and since he lives with a feminist (who played high school basketball in Alaska at the same time as Sarah Palin did),"

"This cavalier recklessness that pervades the mindset of the men's movement is but one more reason to expect nothing but a prolonging of the pain and tragedy that is feminism, even after feminism dies the fiery death it deserves."

It is interesting that you object to the idea of a man freezing his sperm and having a vasectomy. Do you find any falsehood in the claim that a woman can have an abortion without her husband's consent? That is a fact in every state in the US. In fact, she can keep it a secret from him. So why do you object to a man having a vasectomy, prior to marriage?

Feminists claimed that they were giving women reproductive choice via abortion, but they left hundreds of thousands of women without the choice to actually have children by encouraging women to delay marriage for too long and by disrupting the culture of family formation.

And this strikes me as something similar. Men are being urged to assert reproductive choice by making themselves surgically infertile. They gain the choice not to have children, but place under threat the more important choice to actually have children.

Having children of your own is not something to take for granted. There are countless Westerners who have either been unable to have any children or who have not had the number of children they would have liked.

The men's movement wins if it returns society to norms which gave the average man an excellent chance to marry, have children and be a loved and respected husband and father.

I agree that there is no unitary movement. There does exist a movement in the sense that a significant number of men have been drawn toward discussion of men's rights issues at various internet sites. There is a substantial common ground in refuting feminist claims about men. But when it comes to a more positive programme there are considerable differences. There are men who want to go their own way (a kind of male separatism); there are men who want to assert a male autonomy against a female one; and then there are we traditionalists.

I understand that despising men who are righteously angry about serious injustice is important to you trad-cons.

I don't think you do understand. I've been plugging away at these issues for decades. I find much to support in the writings even of the "autonomy" MRAs. But politics includes the task of trying to get ideas and programmes right. It's not a personal attack if I argue that one particular approach is leading to troubling conclusions. I'm either right or wrong in asserting this; if someone thinks I'm wrong they need to explain persuasively why that's the case. But it doesn't mean that I "despise" the person whose ideas I'm critising (which I certainly don't) let alone "despising" men.

Jesse_7 If a woman is likely to go through the trash to impregnate herself with a used condom shes surely likely to give off signs of an unusual degree of entitlement, (even if such an attitude is increasingly common). In such a case you're better off not sleeping with her.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? And yet I can recall at least two women from quite some time back who were very good at acting normal -- but they weren't.

Generally speaking I've been able to tell if women are likely to do something outrageous. However, this comes with experience and you can certainly get burned at the beginning.

Again, my sample is tiny, and I was young and naive at the time, but even then there was something that warned me off of getting too intimate with them. I suspect that people (men and women) who are a danger will tend to reveal that fact in time. That suggests in turn that men would be better off if they didn't just pile into bed with a woman before getting to know her, but try telling that to a 20-something.

It certainly says something that a woman could do that kind of thing and the man would still be liable for child support. Is that really the case?

US child support laws are pretty cut and dried from what I can tell. A woman can lie, claiming she's using the Pill or an IUD when she isn't -- no matter, if she gets pregnant, and decides not to abort or give up for adoption, then the father is on the hook for 18 years. There's a limited period of time to contest paternity -- something like a month, although I'm not sure, and it varies from state to state. If a man doesn't contest paternity in whatever time period there is, he's the father, even if later on it is determined he is not. It can be seen pretty easily why this last bit is so, the best interests of the child -- it would be unreasonable to have some man discover that a 10-year old isn't his, and then yank all financial support out from under.

The problem with paternity/child support laws is twofold IMO: the original laws were written at a time when DNA testing didn't exist, and paternity testing relied on blood type (pretty imperfect data), and the one-sided nature of laws passed in the US starting in the 1970's have not been addressed. If a woman decides to abort, that's it, even if she's married there is no stopping her. On the other hand, if she decides to go ahead and give birth, even if she's unmarried there's no stopping her. All the cards are in her hand.

I do not have the URL to hand, but there is one case that is a scandal; woman seduces teenaged boy (under 18) one or more times. Gets pregnant. Under US law, she's committed statutory rape, sexual intercourse with a minor below the age of consent. However, in a feminist twist, he's on the hook for 18 years of child support...

Little wonder some young men consider vasectomy and freezing of sperm -- if they wish to be "players", i.e. cads, it might be prudent. Although a little time spent pondering the number of sexually transmitted diseases, and the geometric probability of catching one as "partner count" increases, actually going through with being a "player" doesn't have as much going for it as one might think.

The men's movement wins if it returns society to norms which gave the average man an excellent chance to marry, have children and be a loved and respected husband and father.

Perhaps, but frankly you don't have anything to sell to the 22 year old man in the US, who grew up in a feminized school system, saw other boys drugged if they acted too "boyish", saw girls praised and boys denegrated, saw young women given all sorts of extra help and young men none, and now is competing in the job market with women who automatically have an Affirmative Action advantage over him -- but after hours those same women expect him to make all the first moves, and pay for all the dates.

You're saying, "buck up, lad, in 20 years things could be better". Do you recall being 20-something? I do, and 40 looked a long time away.

And once again, to both you and Elizabeth Smith, there is no central, unified, men's rights movement. It doesn't exist, save in your imagination. So the ongoing sniffing about how "those MRA's" are going to ruin everything are simply pointless.

Once again, I can point to a fragmented group of men and some women -- from PUA's to devout Christians -- who agree on some things a lot, and disagree on other things quite a lot, as the grab bag of ideas that sorta kinda is the "men's rights movement".

Anyone who actually understands the most basic aspects of female vs. male psychology would know why there will never be a unified "men's movement" like the feminist "women's movement", and the fact that trad-cons continue to moan that the men will be just like the feminists merely reflects trad-con ignorance of female psychology vs male psychology.

I think that tradcons by and large want to go back and live in some version of Victorian England. Unhappily, that era -- with its flagrant pedestalization of women -- led to the current mess, by peddling the lies that women are more moral than men, and naturally monogamous. So if I am correct, trad-cons just want to repeat the same mistakes all over again. No, thanks.

And Elizabeth Smith, will all due respect to you as a human being, I am not going to take advice from an 18 year old woman on how to live. Not just because of your age, although that is a big part of it, but more because of your female arrogance. You do not have any authority over me, no matter how hard you may try to pretend otherwise. That's another part of the Victorian nostalgia tradcons are carrying, the notion of investing moral authority in anyone with a pair of X chromosomes. It's a fail.

"And Elizabeth Smith, will all due respect to you as a human being, I am not going to take advice from an 18 year old woman on how to live."

Okay.

"Not just because of your age, although that is a big part of it, but more because of your female arrogance."

Female arrogance?

"You do not have any authority over me, no matter how hard you may try to pretend otherwise."

Who said anything about final authority? I'm only giving my opinion and some advice. God and other human entities are the ultimate authority, not me.

"That's another part of the Victorian nostalgia tradcons are carrying, the notion of investing moral authority in anyone with a pair of X chromosomes. It's a fail."

I would like to say to you MRA's (yes you guys are not a unified, coherent movement I know but) where on earth did you get these 'Victorian' classifications?

Did you watch too many British Victorian movies or read too many fictional British Victorian novels? It seems you were spending too much time with some erronous source.

Last but not least traditional conservatives and reactionaries don't "invest moral authority on anybody with a pair of X chromosome".

Truly you MRA's and gamers are the male version of feminists. You think all women are dirty or filthy and that even conservative marriage outside of a liberal secular state is a fail. You think of yourselves as fighting for "men's rights" and building society when in reality you are nothing but a force of destruction and are infected with the prevailing ideology.

Contrary to your message we don't believe women are holy beings and worship them. We just treat some with dignity and other women with scorn. Some women are liars and will steal money from their husbands ruining their lives. Obviously not all of them are saints. We are not putting women on a 'pedestal'.

Keep on reading the evolution influenced worldview present in game and MRA's which says to you that women are nothing more than amoral animals. When are those female robots or transexuals coming up which a couple of you write so fondly as being better than women?

We are not invested in female worship, we are just not invested in female hatred.

"but frankly you don't have anything to sell to the 22 year old man in the US"

Perhaps we don't in the sense that there is no quick fix. We just have to fight the liberal ideology as much as we can by targeting academia, media and science, be the best we can in our lives and live for God and for future generations. MRM and game philosophy isn't a good sell in my opinion. Some nice points but in general they offer little that is good.

The paternity laws as you describe them are horribly biased and in need of desperately urgent overhaul.

Elizabeth,

A couple of strong posts. On your point about competing at the national or local level unfortunately I can't give a very detailed answer right now but I will soon, I promise. I realise that this is the second time now I've not answered this debate.

"And Elizabeth Smith, will all due respect to you as a human being, I am not going to take advice from an 18 year old woman on how to live."

Okay.

"Not just because of your age, although that is a big part of it, but more because of your female arrogance."

Female arrogance?

Yes. That is how I see it.

"You do not have any authority over me, no matter how hard you may try to pretend otherwise."

Who said anything about final authority? I'm only giving my opinion and some advice.

No one on this thread said anything about "final authority" until you did. But your flat, diktat style of "men should do this. MRA's should do that" writing makes it strongly appear that you wish to order men to do your bidding. Not uncommon in modern women, including modern "traditionalist" women, to be sure. Totally unacceptable in any case.

God and other human entities are the ultimate authority, not me.

Then may I gently suggest you attempt to write in a more humble style?

"That's another part of the Victorian nostalgia tradcons are carrying, the notion of investing moral authority in anyone with a pair of X chromosomes. It's a fail."

I would like to say to you MRA's (yes you guys are not a unified, coherent movement I know but) where on earth did you get these 'Victorian' classifications?

I cannot speak for anyone else, but from observation, from reading what is and what is not said. It is routine for trad-cons to denounce pick up artists for their "ruination" of women, even though the PUA's are not stalking churches, Sunday schools or convents, they are working the club scene. You know, the places where women voluntarily go to get sexed by an Alpha. That's just one example. There are many others. The pedestalization of women, the lack of understanding of women's sexual nature, permeates trad-con thinking in my opinion.

Did you watch too many British Victorian movies or read too many fictional British Victorian novels? It seems you were spending too much time with some erronous source.

In fact, I pointed out on this site an example of pedestalization not long ago. I pointed out an example of pedestalization at Dalrock's site last weekend.

Last but not least traditional conservatives and reactionaries don't "invest moral authority on anybody with a pair of X chromosome".

On the contrary, it is the trad-cons and reactionaries who are big proponents of chivalry. But chivalry requires a man to put women -- all women -- on a pedestal above them in some sense. Since women are on average no more intelligent than men and are clearly not stronger than men, that leaves the moral realm. You can't have chivalry without regarding women as somehow being better than men, and the traditional way is to regard them as "more moral" than men. And it shows up over and over again, in many ways, if you know what to look for.

Truly you MRA's and gamers are the male version of feminists. You think all women are dirty or filthy

And here we go with a nice example of what I'm writing about. For the crime of refusing to worship women, you accuse me of thinking "all women are dirty or filthy". Well, based on a number of years of observation, I'll say this: women have the same capacity to be dirty, cruel, sadistic, mean and nasty as men do. You just do it in different ways.

But see? You are angry at me, because I won't acknowledge you as my superior, or so it seems. That is just more evidence for my point; that trad-cons refuse to admit women are no better than men.

and that even conservative marriage outside of a liberal secular state is a fail.

Eh? I doubt that would be legal. In any event, the men you are preaching to don't share your religion. So they aren't going to go along with your churchianty wedding. What do you offer them besides a choice of misery or vice?

You think of yourselves as fighting for "men's rights" and building society when in reality you are nothing but a force of destruction and are infected with the prevailing ideology.

There's that trad-con contempt for men I've come to know so well. Right now, Elizabeth, there are men in prison for a crime they did not commit; false rape accusations are much more common than most people understand. Those men are particularly at risk for being raped -- really raped, anally, not "oh, dear, I was drunk, he must have raped me" -- and what do you tradcons do about that? Nothing. You don't care, do you?. Because to you, men aren't actually human beings, we're beasts of burden and sources of sperm.

Contrary to your message we don't believe women are holy beings and worship them. We just treat some with dignity and other women with scorn.

Oh, yeah, I noticed the outpouring of scorn for Elizabeth Gilbert from you tradcons. Why, the web and the cable TV were just crackling with all the scorn you dumped on her for that despicable divorce porn, "Eat, Pray, Love". I can recall the headlines on newspapers from coast to coast, "Women Refuse To Buy Book, Say It Is 'Disgusting'".

Give me a break. If there's one thing I do not see tradcons doing, it is scorning any woman, no matter what she does. I wager that neither you, nor Laura Woods, nor hardly any other trad con woman ever, ever speak face to face to any other woman the way you do to men online.

Some women are liars and will steal money from their husbands ruining their lives. Obviously not all of them are saints. We are not putting women on a 'pedestal'.

Again, you cannot have chivalry without pedestalizing women. It is not possible.

Keep on reading the evolution influenced worldview present in game and MRA's which says to you that women are nothing more than amoral animals.

You can denounce "game" all you want. But the fact of the matter is, as even Mark Richardson admits, game works because it encapsulates the known psychology of women and men. You can believe in 6-day creationism if you wish, although it means you have to view your God as a capricious liar, but in the real world any model of human behavior that works clearly is based upon reality.

And reality is where we all live, even if we don't like it.

When are those female robots or transexuals coming up which a couple of you write so fondly as being better than women?

Please show me when and where I have ever written anything about female robots, fondly or otherwise? Here is a hint: you can't. Because I have not wasted my time on such a silly topic. But thanks for making it clear that you still can't grasp the fact that all men angry about the wrongs done to men are not the same.

One more time: there's no centralized command telling MRA"s what to do, what to think, what to say. Got it?

We are not invested in female worship, we are just not invested in female hatred.

That's not how I see it. There are men out there, at various sites, who clearly are angry at women, for their own reasons. I do not know if you can understand those reasons, really, partly due to your age. I'm not talking down to you, but really, you cannot have a clue what life is like for men older than you, or what some people have gone through.

There is such a thing as righteous anger. You may not understand it, but it exists. It is not at all the same thing as prejudice, although I suppose it can look that way.

Your denegration of the sufferings of men whom you have never met is not a good thing to do. Again, some more humility would be good to consider.

"but frankly you don't have anything to sell to the 22 year old man in the US"

Perhaps we don't in the sense that there is no quick fix. We just have to fight the liberal ideology as much as we can by targeting academia, media and science, be the best we can in our lives and live for God and for future generations.

In other words, men have a choice to be miserable, or miserable, for the good of what you say. Not much there to fight for, is there?

MRM and game philosophy isn't a good sell in my opinion. Some nice points but in general they offer little that is good.

Do you have any idea how callous this looks? You are dismissing very serious injustices done every day to men in the US with a wave of your hand.

Divorce reform? Custody reform? Mandatory paternity testing to prevent cuckolding? Reform of rape laws to reduce false accusations? Reform of sexual harassment laws to reduce false accusations? Reform or reduction of Affirmative Action to end active discrimination against men in college and jobs?

You dismiss all of that, as "nice points, but in general they offer little that is good". The sheer arrogance, the sheer, blind, cruel, arrogance that you present is not unusual or new to me.

I've seen it in feminists for years.

Once again, you demonstrate that there is no real difference between feminist attitudes towards men and trad-con attitudes. Just different slogans.

Slogans aside, it appears to me that you and Mary Daly would have gotten along fine, just fine.

The paternity laws as you describe them are horribly biased and in need of desperately urgent overhaul.

So far as I know, my description is accurate. Make you think twice about casual sex, as a man, eh? Of course, men whose wives cheat on them and get pregnant are rather out of luck under the current laws, unless they know to test for paternity right after birth. And that might just be an emotional challenge, for any father, to actually go through with.

One small step would be to test all infants born in a hospital for paternity at the same time other tests are performed. If all newborns are tested, the information would not be so offending to the mother, yet cuckolded fathers would have needed information. But mandatory paternity testing is always fought against ferociously by feminists, and never, ever supported by any traditionalists. That leaves the evil "men's rights" types to carry on alone. It is an uphill fight.

Ditto for any divorce reform. I can't find any trad-cons that openly support Fathers for Justice, for example. Do you begin to see why I am annoyed here sometimes?

There are real, definable, steps that could be taken that would restore some measure of justice to men and their children. There are a handful of real, visible, groups trying to get some changes. And tradcons sit on the sidelines, alternately dreaming of some "patriarchal" future, maybe even a monarchy, and sneering at MRA's for their lack of morality.

And Mark Richardson, this last sentence isn't directed at you. I'll take your word for what you say you've done, without quibble. Just want you to know that. Because you're pretty much unique among trad-cons in having actually tried to do something for men, so far as I can tell.

"A woman can lie, claiming she's using the Pill or an IUD when she isn't -- no matter, if she gets pregnant, and decides not to abort or give up for adoption, then the father is on the hook for 18 years."

Here's an example of how many, even in the men's rights movement, have bought into the evil contraceptive mentality of imagining that one has some kind of right to have sex without being responsible for the natural consequences of sex. Anonymous Reader cites this case as if it were an obvious injustice, and I don't mean to pick on him personally; he's probably right that most of his readers will agree with him. That's my point--this is madness. Of course a man is and should be responsible for his biological children, as should their mother. Whether either of them wanted them or not is irrelevant. If you don't want kids, don't have sex.

"Since women are on average no more intelligent than men and are clearly not stronger than men, that leaves the moral realm. You can't have chivalry without regarding women as somehow being better than men, and the traditional way is to regard them as "more moral" than men."

Utter rubbish. Both men and women have a duty to protect children. Does that mean that we regard children as "better" than adults, morally or otherwise? Of course not. It's because we're strong and they're helpless. Similarly, chivalry isn't based on any kind of female superiority but on a kind of male superiority, namely superior physical strength and capacity to repel violence.

I agree with you on a couple of points. The Victorians did take a false step in seeing women as the more morally virtuous sex. I wonder if they did so, in part, because in the Victorian era the balance in the understanding of relationships shifted decisively toward romance, and the male romantic instinct is to idealise women.

I have to say, though, that the traditionalists I read do not believe in the idea of women being morally superior or as being the moral guardians of society.

I agree with you too that traditionalists could pay more attention to discussions about men's issues. These issues will become critical over the next ten years or so and we should certainly contribute.

As for the issue of what traditionalists have to offer 22-year-old men, we are too small a movement at the moment to offer much in the way of practical assistance.

But politically I think we offer a great deal. Most men do still want to marry, to have a masculine role within a family, to experience fatherhood and to belong to an enduring tradition.

Liberal modernism is attacking these aspects of a full life for men. Traditionalism is the effort to explain why this is taking place and to establish a counterweight in society.

And our movement is growing. Lawrence Auster reported the other day that he now gets something like 2,000,000 hits a month. Just ten years ago we barely existed.

"As for the issue of what traditionalists have to offer 22-year-old men, we are too small a movement at the moment to offer much in the way of practical assistance.

But politically we offer a great deal."

I think we have to offer something more than what we are. Just the other day I was hearing about someone on campus who is the subject of the rumor mill where its said that he might have "raped" someone. Apparently, and I don't know all the facts and there are conflicting stories even as to whether it happened, it was at a drunkenish conference and the guy might have exposed himself to some girl, college kids do those kinds of things. Then this progressed in the telling from indecent exposure to a sexual assault and then to rape. This story was being used by people to stop his student political career.

Whether we tell guys to stop with the raunch culture, (or at least to think twice about it, and that might perhaps go along with encouraging them to go to church which has a strong youth focus these days), or we publically stand by and defend guys such as in the above situation who may have acted inappropriately or foolishly but who nonetheless aren't rapists, we must offer immediate support and assistance to young men in today's world.

"I agree with you on a couple of points. The Victorians did take a false step in seeing women as the more morally virtuous sex. I wonder if they did so, in part, because in the Victorian era the balance in the understanding of relationships shifted decisively toward romance, and the male romantic instinct is to idealise women.

I have to say, though, that the traditionalists I read do not believe in the idea of women being morally superior or as being the moral guardians of society."

To "Anonymous Reader" Victorian understanding of women= Traditional conservative understanding of women. It's useless trying to talk to him that he's wrong. He truly believes we worship women or something. Personally I can only deduce his thinking by the fact that we don't hate women and not so much that we love them.

bonald said...Whether either of them wanted them or not is irrelevant. If you don't want kids, don't have sex.

Sexual intercourse is irrelevant as it does not even need to occur. It doesn't matter how a woman becomes pregnant. The male, boy or man, whose sperm is acquired by any means (including extraction of used condoms from rubbish bins) has no say in his own future. Even little boys raped by adult women are forced into parenthood and the parallel financial responsibilities.

Any woman who chooses to become a parent should acquire the consent of the other parent to be. In cases of rape by a woman(25% of child sexual abuse and almost always boys are the victims) the victims should have the right to demand an abortion.

"But do carry on. I understand that despising men who are righteously angry about serious injustice is important to you trad-cons."

I guess one more thing that unifies the so-called "collection of various men and a few women, working in various directions" is the juvenile capacity to hide behind a persecution complex.

The fact that there are some men who are righteously angry is not in and of itself impressive enough to warrant denunciation. What, you think you are the first people to be righteously angry about the evils of feminism? Been there, got the t-shirt. Heck, "angry traditionalist" has morphed into a favorite lefty stereotype. (As for "smug self-satisfaction", who in the internet isn't?) Why would we denounce men who are like us too?

No, what is being denounced here is not the fact that you are angry. The discontent, like the poor, we will always have with us. What is potentially troubling to me, as well as to many traditionalists, is what you do with all that righteous anger. Such anger has the force to change the world, after all. And when you are willing to become the monster that we, as traditionalists, have collectively resisted far longer than you (even if quite ineffectively), we are justly concerned.

Bark all you want about there being no single men's movement. It is true after all. What exists now are small bands of people working towards broadly similar but ultimately contradictory roles. But one day, all these groups will congeal into one great movement of opposition that is dominated by a single voice. Feminism, after all, began the same way. But all these feminists who stood against abortion, contraception, and easy divorce were eventually overwhelmed by that dominant chorus which give us the monster that is tearing our civilization apart. The loudest voices I hear coming out of this loose conglomeration that claim to stand for "men's rights" (as asinine a term as "women's rights") lead me to believe that when this confederacy of righteous anger finally decides to become a movement, that dominating voice will be one that will prolong the agonies wrought by feminism long after the last feminist is hung by the entrails of the last divorce lawyer.

So yeah, keep telling yourself that we're denouncing you because of your righteous anger. Make the same mistake teenagers make about their parents. But, do know that the monster you seek to slay shares more with you than you think, and that the brashness by which you suggest we destroy everything to get to this monster will destroy you as well.

bonaldHere's an example of how many, even in the men's rights movement, have bought into the evil contraceptive mentality of imagining that one has some kind of right to have sex without being responsible for the natural consequences of sex.

Nice example of tradcon selective editing. Anyone who actually read what I wrote would see that I'm more than ready to agree that such intercourse can be deemed wrong.

But what bonald won't admit, cannot admit, is that women in the current situation have every incentive to lie, and few incentives to be honest. Bonald doesn't appear to grasp the fact that every single woman in the US has the right - the unquestioned right - to an abortion, at any time prior to birth, and her husband (if any) has no say in that decision. None.

Tradcons who sit around wishing for some mythical monarchy are not serious people. In my opinion.

I wrote:"Since women are on average no more intelligent than men and are clearly not stronger than men, that leaves the moral realm. You can't have chivalry without regarding women as somehow being better than men, and the traditional way is to regard them as "more moral" than men."

Utter rubbish. Both men and women have a duty to protect children.

Except when the women choose to murder them, of course. Then they have no duty at all. But they can count on trad-cons to come to their defense anyway.

Does that mean that we regard children as "better" than adults, morally or otherwise? Of course not. It's because we're strong and they're helpless. Similarly, chivalry isn't based on any kind of female superiority but on a kind of male superiority, namely superior physical strength and capacity to repel violence.

Only in your imagination. The reality is, you trad-cons routinely pedestalize women. It's embedded in your politics and your ideology. It is my opinion that the trad-con pedestalization of women was the key to the enactment of VAWA in the US, as well as other feminist laws, because you tradcons cannot bring yourselves to publicly criticize, let alone chastise, women.

You are more that willing to accept millions of dead babies every year from "the ladies", but unwilling to raise a single finger to stop yet another man from being sent to prison on false rape charges.

Jonathan Wolfe:I guess one more thing that unifies the so-called "collection of various men and a few women, working in various directions" is the juvenile capacity to hide behind a persecution complex.

Oh, are you a psychiatrist, doing diagnoses over the Internet, now? Or are you just another smug trad-con talking down to someone in lieu of actually having an adult discussion? Well, let's just see.

The fact that there are some men who are righteously angry is not in and of itself impressive enough to warrant denunciation. What, you think you are the first people to be righteously angry about the evils of feminism? Been there, got the t-shirt.

I wager that, like Zed, I have been at this longer than you have.

Heck, "angry traditionalist" has morphed into a favorite lefty stereotype. (As for "smug self-satisfaction", who in the internet isn't?) Why would we denounce men who are like us too?

Trad-cons routinely denounce angry men who will not be pack mules for trad-con causes. The fact that men have issues you don't approve of, such as opposing cuckolding (although I'm sure bonald the pedestalizer will deny this ever happens) via mandatory paternity testing, revising rape laws to reduce the number of men imprisoned due to a woman's lies, and so forth is enough to bring your contempt and sneering out in full force.

You trad-cons wring your hands over society, but you don't do squat, a handful like Richardson excepted.

No, what is being denounced here is not the fact that you are angry. The discontent, like the poor, we will always have with us. What is potentially troubling to me, as well as to many traditionalists, is what you do with all that righteous anger.

Well, since all trad-cons seem to be good for is handwringing, screeching about how evil MRA's are, and yearning for a mythical monarchy, I guess that we'll all find out in good time...and trad-cons, due to a steady refusal to have adult conversations with angry men, won't affect the outcome.

Maybe if you actually attempted to communicate, instead of sneer, with men's rights advocates you might get some where. As it is, the last couple of years has led me to the conclusion that traditionalist conservatives are not just useless, you are actually an impediment to justice.

Such anger has the force to change the world, after all. And when you are willing to become the monster that we, as traditionalists, have collectively resisted far longer than you (even if quite ineffectively), we are justly concerned.

Oh, well, now. If you are willing to admit that trad-cons were "resisting" longer than MRA's, then that means that you are tacitly admitting the following:

* Trad-cons gave up when feminists demanded "no-fault" divorce.

* Trad cons gave up when feminists demanded family court.

* Trad-cons gave up when feminists demanded the Bradley amendment, creating debtor's prison for divorced fathers.

* Trad-cons gave up when Senator Biden championed the Violence Against Womens' Act (VAWA), which federally funds "shelters" that further feminist ends, and which redefined "domestic violence" so broadly that any man who cohabits with a woman is one phone call away from jail.

So you admit that you trad-cons just gave the feminists what they wanted. Traditional conservatives, as I have stated before, are part of the problem.

And now, righteously angry men are supposed to follow your instructions without question?

I don't think so. Because in the end, you did not resist, you capitulated.

I am not a dog. But thanks once again for displaying the kind of "argument" that feminists typically display. You have provided yet another example of how similar you trad-cons are to the feminists you claim to oppose.

It is true after all. What exists now are small bands of people working towards broadly similar but ultimately contradictory roles. But one day, all these groups will congeal into one great movement of opposition that is dominated by a single voice.\

I doubt it. Because I understand men and women, and it appears you do not. Much more likely there will always be multiple groups working on multiple issues -- and trad-cons sitting on the sidelines, spitting on those actually trying to change things for the better, of course.

Feminism, after all, began the same way. But all these feminists who stood against abortion, contraception, and easy divorce

Oh, really? Please do name these feminists. Cite their writings, to prove your claim.

were eventually overwhelmed by that dominant chorus which give us the monster that is tearing our civilization apart. The loudest voices I hear coming out of this loose conglomeration that claim to stand for "men's rights" (as asinine a term as "women's rights") lead me to believe that when this confederacy of righteous anger finally decides to become a movement, that dominating voice will be one that will prolong the agonies wrought by feminism long after the last feminist is hung by the entrails of the last divorce lawyer.

I'm sure you hear all sorts of things. And your purple prose, were it not cribbed from far better writers than you, would almost be interesting.

In any event, changes will be made. From custody of children after divorce, to attacking the many priviliges that women have (thanks in part to trad-cons), to reforming rape laws, changes will be made. They will be made mostly by men.

I doubt that trad-cons will be involved. It would be beneath you to actually lift your hand to help a fellow man -- might interfere with writing another article about "patriarchy", or preening about your superiority due to your churchianity, or something else equally important to you.

So since you refuse to get involved, you won't affect the outcome. That's reality, unlike the trad-con fantasies so popular on some sites...

Certainly it is not useful to rail at me, or call me an animal as Wolfe did. You could try using logic, and reason...

He truly believes we worship women or something.

You don't read very well, or very carefully, or both. It is clear to me that trad-cons place women upon pedestals of moral superiority, just as the Victorians did. I have pointed out this fact on the blog before. You may equate that with worship, but in doing so you aren't making sense.

Personally I can only deduce his thinking by the fact that we don't hate women and not so much that we love them.

Personally, I don't see any evidence that you can define the word "deduce", let alone engage in it. You post emotionally, use logical fallacies, fail to read the comments you are responding to, and generally exhibit an immature lack of reasoning. I'm willing to make some allowances due to your age, but once again:

a bit of humility on your part would go a long way.

It's funny, I've known some real traditional people in my day, some of them were born in the 19th century. None of them were as rude to me as most trad-cons are. None of them engaged in name calling as a routine thing; they had their prejudices, but they had manners as well, even those that never went much beyond the 8th grade.

To paraphrase: I've known real traditionalist men and women, and most trad-cons today are not at all like those people were.

(But trad-cons do argue just like feminists very often. Gee, why is that?)

And just in case anyone bothers to read this section again, let me point this out:

I wrote, in response to Elizabeth Smith:

Divorce reform? Custody reform? Mandatory paternity testing to prevent cuckolding? Reform of rape laws to reduce false accusations? Reform of sexual harassment laws to reduce false accusations? Reform or reduction of Affirmative Action to end active discrimination against men in college and jobs?

Casual readers might have missed the fact that in her response, she ignored all of the above points. She just didn't bother to even mention them. Instead, I received yet another personal attack from a trad-con in lieu of an adult discussion.

I submit this is typical. Trad-cons simply don't see any reason to actually engage the real issues, it seems to me. Trad-cons prefer mutual admiration societies and vanity press web sites, where they can tell each other how much better they are than everyone else...especially those evil men who actually want to change laws for the better.

Again, rather like feminists, although to Mark Richardson's credit there are comments on this web site, a conspicuous difference between this site and femisting, jezebel, etc.

Yet another one for bonald, and I'm annoyed with myself for forgetting it.

It's been four years since Magill vs. Magill, in Australia. Do a search on Liam Magill, and tell me if you find anything wrong with what his lady-wife did.

PS: As a bonus, consider if Justice Crennan is any model of behavior, either. But, of course, she must not be criticized for her actions, after all, we are not to say any harsh words to the "ladies", eh, bonold?